The Kremlin, in an unprecedented series of ultimatums on Monday, said Russia would suspend an agreement it had signed with the United States to turn weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear reactor fuel unless the United States rescinds the sanctions imposed on Russia because of its annexation of Crimea – and also cuts its military commitments to NATO. The Kremlin said that both the economic sanctions and the U.S. military commitments to its NATO allies are “unfriendly” acts to ward Russia.

The Kremlin, in an unprecedented series of ultimatums on Monday, said Russia would suspend an agreement it had signed with the United States to turn weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear reactor fuel unless the United States rescinds the sanctions imposed on Russia because of its annexation of Crimea – and also cuts its military commitments to NATO.

The Kremlin said that both the economic sanctions and the U.S. military commitments to its NATO allies are “unfriendly” acts to ward Russia.

Vladimir Putin issued a presidential decree on Monday, freezing the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA) because of “a drastic change in circumstances, the appearance of a threat to strategic stability due to unfriendly actions of the United States toward Russia.”

ABC News reports that the decree claims that Washington was “unable” to meet its obligations under the terms of the agreement and that Moscow “must take urgent measures to defend Russian security.”

A draft law later published on the Web site of the lower house of the Russian parliament said Russia would reinstate the nuclear deal only if the United States cancel all economic sanctions, pay Russia compensation for the damage the sanctions have already caused, and reduce its military infrastructure and number of soldiers in those NATO countries which joined the alliance after 2000. Russia insists that the size of the military infrastructure and number of soldiers in those countries which joined NATO after 2000 – the year in which the PMDA was signed – should be reduced to the levels of 2000.

The PMDA, first negotiated by Putin and Bill Clinton in 2000 and updated in 2010, committed Russia to dispose of at least thirty-four tons of weapons grade plutonium, enough to produce around 17,000 nuclear weapons.

ABC News notes that the PMDA has been under pressure for some time. The original plan was to irradiate plutonium to produce Mixed Oxide Fuel (MOX) for nuclear power plants, but the United States abandoned its plan to build a MOX production facility in Savannah River, South Carolina, because of cost overruns and safety fears.

The new plan called for alternative methods of disposal, including diluting the weapon-grade plutonium and burying it underground.

Russia, for its part, said that the dilution option was not a good one because the dilution of plutonium can be reversed.

The cancellation of the Savanah River MOX plant led Putin, this past April, to charge that the United States had failed to live up to its commitments, telling journalists that Russia had already built its own MOX-producing facilities to fulfill its part of the agreement, and complained that alternative methods of disposal would allow the United States, at some point in the future, to reverse the dilution and use the plutonium for weapons.

Experts note that it is not clear whether Putin’s move will have a significant ramifications for arms control or Russia’s nuclear weapons program.

The decree Putin had signed on Monday stresses that the plutonium left unprocessed as a result of the suspension of PMDA will not be used for bomb making or any other military purposes.

Others note that that Russia will continue to process its own plutonium into nuclear fuel with or without PMDA.

Pavel Podvig, a researcher at the UN Institute on Disarmament Research and expert on Russian nuclear weapons, told ABC News that “There was already little chance the agreement would be implemented as envisaged, and they only difference is that Russia now doesn’t have to submit this process to monitoring by the US or IEA. The choice of language is the most significant bit here.”